Spectator sports, such as professional or collegiate football, baseball, basketball, and hockey, rely on fan participation to generate revenue and enthusiasm. Over the years, fan participation and enthusiasm has driven spectator sports to become highly lucrative. As a result, numerous secondary businesses and events have been fostered and created based on the ever increasing popularity of the spectator sport.
Fantasy leagues, in particular, are an increasingly popular and sophisticated derivative of spectator sports. Currently, fantasy leagues for football, baseball, basketball and hockey are readily available. The emergence of the Internet and online environment has in particular fostered the growth behind the fantasy leagues.
In general, a fantasy league simulates, or at least corresponds, to events of a particular sports league. Fantasy football leagues, for example, have members that form fantasy teams. Each fantasy team may have designated positions corresponding to what an actual sports team has. For example, a fantasy football team may have all the offensive, defensive and special team positions of an actual professional football team. The members of a fantasy league go through a selection process where each makes a selection of a particular player for his team. A member of a fantasy football league can fill the positions of his fantasy team by assigning a particular position or role on his team to a named football player. The team that the named player plays on in the actual sports league is not relevant in the fantasy team. But the statistics the named player acquires in the course of a season are converted into fantasy numbers. The member's fantasy team is then ranked against other fantasy teams by an aggregate or total value reflecting the fantasy numbers of all positions or slots in the fantasy team, where each such fantasy number is derived from the performance of a corresponding player in the actual sports league. The fantasy number that is determined for a player is usually statistical in nature, reflecting both positive statistics (scoring a touchdown, throwing a completed pass, running yardage) and negative statistics (fumble, interception, incomplete pass) of the player's performance in the season.
Fantasy numbers may be formulated based on a particular player's position. For example, a quarterback fantasy number may use pass attempts, completion ration, touchdown passes, and turnovers as statistical input in deriving an overall fantasy number. In contrast, a fantasy number for a cornerback may be based on the number of interceptions and tackles that the particular cornerback player had in the course of a season.
Fantasy league services, particularly those that operate on the Internet, sometimes provide some predictive valuation of a player for purpose of guiding members of the fantasy league to select players. For example, a fantasy league service may list a number of quarterbacks in the NFL along with a fantasy number. The fantasy number may be based on that player's past performance, particularly in respect to how that player's past performance has been valued in terms of that league's point scoring system. A participant or member of a fantasy league may also subscribe to third party services, review fantasy sports magazines, or other sources of information to obtain statistical information for predicting the value of a particular player to his fantasy team. Other services may quantify statistics in terms of one or more predictive value numbers in order to guide their users in selecting players for their fantasy teams. Current methodologies to evaluate players based on historical statistics are described in more detail below.
There are different types of fantasy leagues, each with different sets of rules. In general, the rules of the fantasy leagues may be based on the amount of participation the user of the service is expected to have with the fantasy teams. Some fantasy leagues are for casual users, while others are for more sophisticated users who spend considerable more time developing strategy and data. But in most cases, fantasy leagues have two stages: (1) player selection, and (2) team management.
In player selection, the members of the fantasy league make player selections based on predictions of which players are best suited for their team. A player from a sporting team is typically only assigned to one fantasy team, so a league member will not get every player he wants. Rather, league members may be required to rank players and have the service assign players to each member. Alternatively, a live or simulated draft may be conducted in which each league member makes a selection in a designated draft order. In either case, the fantasy league members must make some decisions on what players to select and when. For example, the member may make a player selection based on what he hopes that player will produce in terms of fantasy points, and what players other members in the league are expected to select for their respective fantasy teams. Current methodologies to assist users in making draft decisions are described below.
After player selection, the members manage their teams. Many fantasy sports services let members trade players, release players, and acquire new players as free agents. However, certain league-dependent rules may apply to these player transactions. For example, the number of trades a member may make may be limited in a season. The number of acquisitions may also be constrained by team size. Members may make management decisions based on the performance of their fantasy teams. For example, players performing poorly in terms of points may be released and replaced. A member may prefer another player, in which case a trade may be worked out amongst two members in a league. Again, the particular transactions that can be done with a particular fantasy service depend on the rules of that fantasy service.
Fantasy leagues may include play-off and championship rounds, but these rounds may not be based on playoff or championship events in the actual sports league. For example, some fantasy football leagues designate the first 12 weeks of the NFL season the regular season, designate weeks 13-16 of the NFL's regular season the playoffs, and ignore week 17, when many meaningless games are played. Many fantasy leagues end with week 16, because the subsequent playoff season only involves a fraction of the players in the NFL.
Existing Player Valuation Methods
There are two basic metrics that are normally used to determine a value assigned to a player for purpose of predicting that player's value in a fantasy league. These metrics include performance categories and a fantasy league point system. Performance categories include statistical quantities of a player's past performances. For example, the performance of individual offensive and defensive players are tracked in multiple categories (i.e. Touchdowns, Yardage Gained, Receptions, Interceptions, Field Goals) and aggregated over an entire season. Defensive teams as a whole are also tracked in multiple categories (i.e. Touchdowns Against, Yardage Against, Interceptions, Sacks) and aggregated over an entire season. Each individual fantasy sports league sets a specific point value for each performance category (i.e. 6 points for a Touchdown, 1 point for 20 yards gained, 2 points for a reception, 5 points for a Field Goal over 50 yards). These two metrics are combined (e.g. multiplied together and summed) to compute an individual players or teams total estimated fantasy point value.
Existing Draft Methods
There are currently two methodologies used during a fantasy sports draft to help users make decisions on what players to select. The first methodology, Value Based Drafting (“VBD”), is the most prominent. The second methodology, Dynamic Value Based Drafting (“DVBD”), is a more advanced version of VBD but is not widely used because of the complexity of the calculations. VBD provides a relative value of players in comparison to each other based on a fantasy point value metric before the draft starts.
VBD is used to determine which players are the most highly valued relative to other players at the same position. To determine which player will provide the most relative value, VBD subtracts from all players at a position the value of the last starting player at that position based on player rankings (i.e. if there are 10 participants in a league that each have to start 2 Running Backs, then the point value of the 20th most highly ranked Running Back will be subtracted from the point value of all other players). This provides a relative value of all players available in a draft as compared to the worst starting player at their same position.
DVBD uses VBD as its basis and also takes into account changes in the supply of players at each position as the players are drafted. The advantage that DVBD provides over VBD is in calculating the relative values of players still available as a draft progresses. Instead of using the arbitrary value of the last starting player at each position as a baseline, DVBD uses the value of the players likely to be available for the participants' next draft pick. This value is more pertinent as users typically compare consecutive draft picks with each other more often than they compare their current draft pick with the last pick of the draft. This value will change as players are selected and as the draft progresses.
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